


Don't Let Me Drown

by Shatteeran



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, First Dates, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Good Theo Raeken, M/M, Morning After, Second Kiss, Swimming, Theo-centric, There's A Tag For That
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:11:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteeran/pseuds/Shatteeran
Summary: Based on this prompt: "How to swim: One of them surprises the other by taking them to the lake on a really hot summer day, cute little picnic included. They don’t understand why the other one acts so weird about it, and then their outright shocked (and a little hurt) when the other one runs away instead of coming along into the water. It takes an eternity, a lot of softness and cheek kisses and ice cream to get the other one to open up about what’s wrong, because they’re ashamed of it: They can’t swim. But eventually, they’re ready for the other to teach them. There’s a lot of soft touching and reassuring and loving support. The one learning it is so fucking pumped when they’re starting to get a hang of it and the other one’s so proud they could cry."





	Don't Let Me Drown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [parttimehuman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/parttimehuman/gifts).



> So here it is! The Angst was to be expected... The Smut kinda happened on its own. I regret nothing!

“Take a left there!”, Liam ordered, bouncing in his seat. His beige shorts rid a little higher on his muscly thighs. Theo’s eyes snapped back to the werewolf’s face. He schooled his features when he noticed the younger boy’s knowing smile.

“There’s nothing on this side of the preserve”, the chimera stated in his best impersonation of unimpressed.

“Make a left”, Liam repeated, sounding for all matters like a six-year-old.

“Why?”, the chimera retorted, his own tone a refined mix of condescending and childish. If Liam was 6, he was 8. Theo wasn’t proud.

Instead of providing a worded, constructed, and mature answer, Liam No Chill Dunbar launched himself across the gearbox. Theo swatted his grabbing hands away from the steering wheel. The truck swerved on the muddy road.

“Sorry, Little Wolf, driver picks the direction, shotgun shuts his fang hole.”

The werewolf snorted.

“Dork.”

“Freak.”

“Make a left, or I’ll never have sex with you ever again.”

Theo turned left. Liam racked a hand through his spiky hair and leaned against the windowsill. He pretended to be engrossed in the scenery to hide his victorious grin. The chimera really did not mind. The whole cabin smelled of his lover’s contentment and excitement. Were it up to him, he would let them both bask in it for hours – scratch that, forever.

 

“I won’t let anyone ruin this date”, Liam beamed. “Not even you.” 

Theo bit his tongue. He hadn’t been sure before. Hell, two minutes prior, he could not have told you whether long, hot, sticky, sexy times with the werewolf were still on the table… on the bed… on the couch… on the carpet… Theo would make love to him on the forest soil if Liam offered. His mind drifted back to images of the beta’s thick limbs, splayed on white sweaty sheets, like a feast for his eyes and lips. To his face and strong neck, flushed down to his slightly hairy chest. To the ocean of tenderness in his azure eyes and to the vertiginous mounds of his kissed-out lips as they whispered dirty promises and soft pleas…

“I think about it too”, Liam offered, breaking him out of his reverie. “All the time”, he added, apparently enjoying watching Theo lose the fight against his rising blush. “But this is not what today is about. Besides…”, the beta marked a pause for effect before continuing, accompanying his words with a wide movement of his arm to present the view: “We’re here!” 

The chimera turned off the ignition without any askance from the werewolf. He was so whipped it was ridiculous. He stepped off the truck, walked around the front to stretch his legs. The pure air slightly burned his lungs in the most pleasant way. A deep sigh escaped his mouth as he took in the natural clearing in the middle of the forest. The river flowed irregularly through Beacon Hills woods, sometimes disappearing completely amidst the pines and under the rockslides. The formation of a natural lake at the heart of the forest was as unexpected as it was breathtaking: under Talia Hale’s mandate, Town Hall had opted to preserve the site and the area was obviously not hospitable to most humans. But, with a couple of jumps and a bit of climbing, the chimera found himself on a flat and sturdy boulder overlooking the water. He was absorbed in his contemplation of the sunny reflections playing with the greens of the leaves, pine needles and algae when Liam joined him and stood next to him, a basket in his left hand.

 

“Great! You found the spot on your own!”, he noted with a smile. Theo added the blue of Liam’s eyes to the list of colors dancing behind his own eyelids.

Dizzy with happiness and confusion, he silently watched the younger boy’s fish a plaid blanket out of the basket and carefully lay it at their feet.

“Are you okay?”, Liam murmured, as he deposited and opened the small Tupperware boxes of various foods he had brought with him for their picnic. He was obviously taking extra precaution not to antagonize… his date. “You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet all morning.”

The chimera swallowed his saliva, looked at Liam as he sat on the blanket, extending his legs on the side of the warm rock, then around at the scenery.

“This is beautiful”, he said to no one in lieu of replying.

Liam did not catch his double entendre, grabbed a cherry tomato and popped it in his mouth. Theo’s entire focus zeroed in on the stretch of his cheek around the fruit. He kneeled next to the werewolf, completely lost.

 

They ate in companionable silence, enjoying the kisses of the sun and the caresses of the wind on their skin. It unfortunately left plenty of time for the Raeken boy to rehash the events of the past night. He remembered the set-up, though the cause for Liam’s sudden anger already blurred in his memories. They were arguing in Liam’s bedroom, as they so often did after a rough day of hunting Monroe or her followers, when the baby blue-eyed beta had attacked his lips. The kiss had both surprised and settled him, the werewolf’s mouth feeling so good and so right on his. Their frolicking had progressed into necking, nipping at each other’s skin, and… The older boy had forgotten whether they had actually exchanged words. In his mind, the soundtrack solely consisted of soft moans and rustling of clothes, of egging growls and whimpers, of grunts and slapping sounds of skin-on-skin contact, of labored breathings, of choked-out whines. This morning, Liam had woken up, gotten up, dressed up. Then he had demanded Theo did the same and drove them…

“Are we gonna talk about this?”, the chimera wondered aloud, frustrating seeping in his voice.

“About what?”

“About what?”, Theo echoed, befuddled and annoyed. “About what happened, what is happening, what will happen… Liam! We need to talk about this.”

The young werewolf sat up, tensed, as surely as if he had been slapped. A shadow of hurt clouded his until now serene face. A ring of yellow brightened his irises. Theo squared his shoulders, readying himself for the onslaught yet not backing down. But it never came. Liam’s anger deflated… Sadness and fierce resignation permeated the air around them.

“Can’t we not do this right now?”, the beta asked. “I had this perfect date planned for us today. Can’t we have a couple more hours before we end it? I won’t ever ask for more… Just a couple of hours today.”

“Liam, I…”, Theo started to answer, intent on dissipating what appeared to be a growing quid pro quo.

“Please, Theo”, Liam insisted, eyes glassy and a pout on his lips Theo was assured the boy was not aware of.

“What did you have in mind?”

The smile returned on his little wolf’s face as quickly as his question had chased it away. But his scent continued to smell wrong… right up until Liam removed his shirt. Theo could have sworn his eyes bulged in his orbits. In spite of their lovemaking in the secret of the night before, he had barely spotted Liam’s body in all his naked glory. The unannounced view of his toned abs and glistening pectorals made him yearn to touch… Meanwhile, the beta wolf had discarded his sneakers and his shorts had joined the shirt he had thrown on the blanket.

Hardly believing his luck, Theo slowly began to undo his own shoes, which was surprisingly difficult to achieve without taking his eyes off of the sinful body exposed so close to him. Liam turned to him with a cheeky smile, challenging him to control his reaction; then, in one swift move, he dropped his boxers, very consciously presenting his bubble butt to the chimera. Theo chocked.

Liam glanced at him over his shoulder, a shit-eating grin illuminating his face.

“Skinny-dipping”, he finally answered. 

He dived of the boulder directly in the lake below. The splashes of water temporarily drowned his cackles. Theo threw a look over the edge at the bubbling pool below. A nauseating coldness planted his claws in his stomach. Dropping his car keys on the blanket for Liam to find later, he wordlessly turned around and climbed down the rock formation. He did not look back as he passed his truck, did not even pause before striding towards the trees marking the edge of the clearing. He just needed to get away. At a measured pace, with a controlled respiration. He just had to gather his bearings and leave. Slowly, or he knew he would never stop running. He could not however stop berating himself as his legs carried him deeper into the forest. How could he think he deserved Liam? How stupid and complacent had the boy made him? What a lack of judgment and self-awareness!

 

Lost in thoughts, he completely missed the hints his superior senses collected around him; he only remarked the beta’s presence when his chest forcefully met a cone pine trunk, the resulting whoof he emitted sounding a little too close to a bark for his own comfort. A second later, a very angry and very naked Liam had grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and pressed him back against the tree. His forehead glistened under waterdrops. They ran on his cheeks and pooled around his neck. They licked his chest and messed the hair on his chest. They glued flakes of mud and pine needles on his legs and hips and…

“Liam! Your dick…”, Theo warned.

“You’RE a dick!”, Liam shot back around elongated fangs. “What the hell, Theo? You said you’d give me two hours! What happened?”

Passion burned in the werewolf’s shining irises. The prominent features of the shift were supposed to warn attackers and discourage predators, but in the chimera’s heart, desire battled self-loathing and frustration for control. Incapable of picking an emotion to guide his behavior, Theo responded with a question.

“What are you doing, Baby Wolf? What is this?”, he snarled. “Hot sex with the resident Bad Boy, I’m sure Scott will let it pass. But a date? With your former enemy? I’m a cold-blooded killer, Liam! I manipulated you into killing your Alpha! I’m not… I’m not… boyfriend-material”, he ended with a lower voice.

The younger boy pressed his wet and warm nude body against him. The water imbued Theo’s clothes, stuck the fabric to his skin; pretty quickly, all he could perceive, all he could smell was Liam. God! How he longed for a taste… His little wolf’s voice filled his eardrums.

“I don’t want you to be boyfriend-material”, Liam said, resting his chin on Theo’s chest to capture his gaze. “You know, in Europe, back in the 17th century, they… Ha!”, he exclaimed, not without tenderness.

“What?”, Theo uttered, tense because of Liam’s proximity and because of the emotional topic of their discussion and because the potentiality of having disappointed Liam and of them not being friends anymore scared him more than he could ever comprehend.

“Mason pretends to snore when I speak about History. Do you know what you do?”

“What do I do?”, Theo whispered.

“You give me this look. You roll your eyes because they fill with so much affection you have to move them around to free them”, Liam explained on the same tone. “Theo, you never get scared when I get angry; you don’t downplay it either… You meet me halfway. You… You call me ‘Little Wolf’ and I feel wanted and safe. What happened yesterday between us wasn’t planned, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve wanted it for weeks.”

Theo’s arms ceased to obey him and snuck around Liam’s waist, pressing the werewolf even closer to him. Liam sighed with contentment. A shiver ran through them both. The chimera buried his nose against his little wolf’s neck. Sensing the older boy unable to formulate his thoughts just yet, Liam gave him a few minutes to recover.

“I’ve wanted you for weeks”, he clarified over and over again, before bringing their discussion back to the topic. “Now, what brought on this?”

The chimera’s mouth contorted into an asymmetrical grin. Liam observed the marks of his internal struggle animate his face with loving eyes, until Theo eventually confessed.

“I can’t swim”, he admitted in a voice so small that, even squeezed as they were, Liam’s supernatural hearing apparently did not pick it up.

“What?”

“I can’t swim”, he repeated, dejection now evident in his voice. He expected laughter or contempt. His revelation was met by incredulity instead.

“You can’t swim?”, Liam echoed.

“Yes!”, Theo snapped. “The Big Bad Chimera of Death can’t swim! What are you going to do about it?”, he provoked, eager to receive anger, violence and aggression rather than silence, pity or rejection.

“I’ll teach you”, Liam simply said before brushing his lips against Theo’s pulse. The _Big Bad Chimera of Death_ pathetically whined.

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like what?”, Liam drawled as he drew a collar of fading hickeys around his lover’s neck.

“Weak”, the older boy got out, too afraid the wrong move would interrupt whatever Liam seemed to be intent on achieving.

“Weak because you tried something new? Because you wanted to please me? Because you let me see something you have never shown anyone else?”, the werewolf suggested, each time yanking Theo’s shirt down to carry forward his exploratory trail of kisses.

“When you put it like that…”, Theo stammered, his resolve crumbling.

“Well”, the beta concluded, brusquely stepping out of their embrace. “I’ll put it like this: let me try to teach you how to swim and I’ll blow you tonight.”

The little shit downright grinned when Theo’s answer faltered. He intertwined their fingers and surreptitiously led the chimera back to the lake.

“But if you actually manage to swim”, he continued as they walked towards the edge of the water. “I’ll do it on the ride back to my house.”

 

Entranced, and hornier than he had ever been in his entire miserable life, Theo let himself be guided until they reached the shore. Liam had caught him in his nets; he would not try to escape anymore. He no longer had the strength nor the bravery. He had never had the will.

The beta wolf glanced at the chimera’s bare feet.

“Were you really going to walk all the way back to the city without your shoes?”, Liam teased.

“Were you really going to follow me all the way back to the city without your clothes?”, Theo taunted right back.

“Dork!”

“Freak!”

“Right!”, Liam laughed good-naturedly. “Maybe we should fix that.” 

Instead of climbing back up the rockslide, he let Theo’s hand go, grabbed the hem of his shirt and, with infinitely more care and time than he had used the day before, pulled it up the chimera’s ribs, up his chest, up his head. He uncovered his lover’s upper body with light and gracious touches, wonder and adoration in each of his movements. His hands flew to Theo’s hips, tracing around his waist. They met in the middle to undo the button of his jeans. Theo gulped. Liam kneeled to slide his pants down; finger-splayed hands caressed his legs as his little wolf stood back up.

Liam planted his blue eyes in Theo’s, then. Two thumbs hooked themselves into his red boxers. The younger boy waited, silently asking for permission. Erratic drumming completely masked the ambient sounds: two hearts played in unison. The Raeken boy nodded imperceptibly. His underwear joined the pile of discarded clothes on the forest ground. He shuddered. Even the night before, he had never felt this exposed. Liam had pushed through and demolished every one of the chimera’s barrier, leaving him raw and insecure and… The beta rewarded him with a tiny smile. He grabbed Theo’s hand once more and pulled him towards the natural pool. They entered the water, side-to-side, with a gravity two young men did not usually display in such a setting.

The werewolf stopped when the river reached his ribcage. He turned to his pupil for the day.

“Do you trust me?”, he checked, his own face open and caring.

“I love you”, Theo blurted, without a second thought. He prodded around his own mind, searching for regret at his admission, but found nothing but blazing pride. Liam’s smile was equally blinding, but he chose not to acknowledge the declaration.

“Okay. Then, feet off the river bed!”

The older boy threw him a dubious glare, but otherwise obeyed. Or, at least, tried to obey. He barely had his two feet off the ground that he started splashing around vividly, desperate to stay afloat. The wolf passed an arm under his knees and the other around his shoulders, brought Theo securely back against his chest. The chimera’s glare evolved into a much more pronounced grimace of disapproval.

The beta shushed him, brought his moving lips closer to the older boy’s parted ones. Closer. Until they touched. Theo closed his eyes and sighed in Liam’s mouth, his own arms settling around the other boy’s neck. Finally. His little wolf kissed him thoroughly, languidly and Theo understood, with each pass of the younger boy’s tongue on the inside of his upper lip, with each nibble on his lower lip, that the longing and anticipation had been mutual all day long. Losing himself in their quiet dialog, Theo relished on the brush of the beta’s skin against his side; his fingers automatically went to play with the wet hair on Liam’s nape. One of them moaned… They eventually had to part for oxygen, and, when Theo reopened his eyes, he was admittedly disoriented by their intense make-out session. Hence why it took him a couple of seconds to realize Liam had sneakily brought them to the middle of the lake.

 

“You…”, he began to complain, but Liam pecked him to shut him up. They were both stupefied to discover just how effective the tactic was.

“I’m going to let you go now. I’ll keep holding your hand. I’ll always be at arm’s length, okay?”, the improvised teacher warned as he deftly escaped Theo’s embrace. “You want another?”, he seductively baited his lover, all the while greedily eyeing the chimera’s puffy lips. “Swim to me!” 

Never breaking eye contact, he released the older boy’s gripping hand then, and, as he had committed to, swam no more than three feet away. Pulled by the promises in the baby blue eyes, Theo kicked the water around in an attempt to use the ever-flowing liquid as leverage to jump towards his… Liam. The next second, he found himself once more in the arms of his boyfriend, being kissed within an inch of his life. This time though, Liam’s fingers danced against his lower back, sending flutters in his belly. A warmth Theo knew all too well invaded his nether regions. All too soon, his boyfriend put once more an end to their kiss. The chimera growled in frustration.

“Now”, the beta announced as he floated farther away, a pleased and lecherous smile on his lips. “Again, but we’ll make it a little bit harder.”

The end of his sentence was greeted by an armful of Theo demanding his lips and mumbling in his mouth: “I’ll show you harder, Dunbar.”

The beta wolf laughed and wiggled away, Theo chased him and snickered; and inevitably, thirty minutes later, the competitive Raeken boy had mastered break-stroke and crawl all on his own…

 

When dusk fell around the clearing, the chimera refused to leave the water. All tapped out after playing around all afternoon, he was content to let himself drift in the middle of the lake, light and free, watching the clouds ephemerally color the darkening skies.

“Theo!”, Liam shouted from the truck, where he had neatly stowed away the basket, blanket and the leftovers. “It’s time to go home!”

“But I wanna stay”, his boyfriend shouted back, albeit a bit childishly, but nonetheless delighted with the way their first date had gone. “I can _swim_ , Liam!”

“Yes, you can!”, Liam conceded. “Don’t you want your price?”

His little wolf watched with intense satisfaction as Theo reached the shore in record times. The chimera really did not mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to anonymously complain about this work on my Tumblr (shatteeran.tumblr.com)!


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